For those not sold on the looks and cooling performance of NVIDIA's reference design for the GeForce GTX Titan, GIGABYTE could have an alternative DIY cooling solution concept. The company is working on a new high-performance air graphics card cooler, which it could deploy on upcoming high-end graphics cards. Named WindForce 450W, the cooler is designed to handle thermal loads as high as 450W. GIGABYTE strapped it on to the GeForce GTX TITAN and GTX 680, to show it off, at its "New Idea Tech Tour" event held in Berlin.

WindForce 450W is a triple-slot graphics card cooler. It uses a pair of dense aluminum fin stacks to dissipate heat. Three thick (10 mm thick?) copper heat pipes convey heat to these stacks, which is drawn directly from the GPU die. The two stacks are ventilated by three 80 mm fans. When strapped to a GeForce GTX 680, GIGABYTE claims the cooler keeps its noise below 28.3 dB, with Furmark running. On the GTX Titan, it works to provide higher GPU Boost frequencies, or helps sustain set frequency offsets better. With NVIDIA clamping down restrictions on modifying reference design GeForce GTX TITAN (with exceptions for liquid-based custom cooling solutions), we won't see a card that combines the chip with WindForce 450W any time soon.

is it just me or is the pcb bent slightly due to the weight of the cooler ? , no support for such an expensive card is rather poor tbh . would it not put stress on the pci-e slot ?

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I was beaten to the punch it seems. The reason the PCB is bent is because of the retention system. When there's no PCB stiffener, or something to counter the mounting pressure by say having the shroud attached at the corners of the PCB, the result is bending. This was noted in detail in Anandtech's review of the GTS450 which had many custom versions with no PCB reinforcement.

The bend that card has, is about what my GTX680 looks like right now with a full coverage waterblock on it. Mind you a waterblock is much heavier then a heatsink. Main reason why I just got a backplate to hopefully straight it out a bit.

wow!! correct me if im wrong, but thatll probably stress the pcb and cause a contact problem with heatsinks. just like the version 1 of direct cu2 before the V2. and thinking of asus, that looks similar to whats inside the directcu2... ''Three thick (10 mm thick?) copper heat pipes convey heat to these stacks, which is drawn directly from the GPU die''

WindForce 3X coolers were always great. I can OC my card to 1200MHz at over 1,2V and it will remain silent while temp never goes beyond 75°C. Btw, mine already has the triangle shaped metal block over the GPU which is also pierced by the heatpipes. Quite effective design which also resists dust pretty well. I was running my box without intake filters for a while and while all the fans and coolers had plety of dust on them, Gigabyte card barely needed any cleaning and it had no dust residues anywhere. Amazing really.

As for the bended card, mine has reinforcement bar on the CrossfireX connectors side and while it does bend a bit it's far less. MSI's TwinFrozr III also had such reinforcement. I'm quite sure they'll add one here as well.

WindForce 3X coolers were always great. I can OC my card to 1200MHz at over 1,2V and it will remain silent while temp never goes beyond 75°C. Btw, mine already has the triangle shaped metal block over the GPU which is also pierced by the heatpipes. Quite effective design which also resists dust pretty well. I was running my box without intake filters for a while and while all the fans and coolers had plety of dust on them, Gigabyte card barely needed any cleaning and it had no dust residues anywhere. Amazing really.

As for the bended card, mine has reinforcement bar on the CrossfireX connectors side and while it does bend a bit it's far less. MSI's TwinFrozr III also had such reinforcement. I'm quite sure they'll add one here as well.

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Most of the custom twin fan HS models do very well temp wise . My MSI 660ti PE would run the hottest at about 65c and that was 1202 out of box .
Crank up voltage and clocks it just gets better and with custom fan profile its easy to keep it under 60c .

Coolers like this are starting to annoy me, i mean yea it does cool it and yea its quieter.. But what do you expect if its 3 times the size of the original cooler?? If people are going as far as 3 pci slots just for Cooling a single gpu i really think its time the way gpus are cooled, changes. I mean come on!! You can have a cooler the size of a brick sizzling away at sti high temps? :/ i really wish some saviour invents some new way of cooling that dominates fans, they just dont work as good as they used to, i know i may be soundin a little extreme but i can run at 5ghz on my i7 at like 60 degrees with a h60..water cooling is so mucn more effective and sorta around the same price.. And yeea i know thats bigger and that but liquid cooling or another way needs to be available, all the new fans and coolers that come out just look all the same.. What about a graphics card with the radiator (dual 120mm fan one) on top, the side with no gpu, and two fans over it, and then a full body watercooling plate over the other side with pipes from the top radiator going to that... Thats like a independent water cooled card! :0 someone make dis nao :3

What about a graphics card with the radiator (dual 120mm fan one) on top, the side with no gpu, and two fans over it, and then a full body watercooling plate over the other side with pipes from the top radiator going to that... Thats like a independent water cooled card! :0 someone make dis nao :3

I think the bend is due to the lens on the camera used. You can see how the chassis itself has a severe bend in it when it is definitely straight, due to the lens distortion. Even the PCIE slots are easily visibly bent due to the distortion.